The internet is littered with KABOOM reports where the shooter blindy swears it was not fault or his reloads. It takes a real man to admit he made a mistake. A read emailed me with photos of a KABOOM that happened on 4 July. He admits he should not have been shooting the old, poor quality gun and is sharing his story in the hopes that it will make people more safety conscious.

He writes …

Here is my story which I share in the hopes that the incident will help make people more aware and more conscious. I know there will be them that will say “that would never happen to me” well I was one of them yesterday and considered myself a safe and conscientious gun owner but I became complacent in my knowledge and skill and it led to this kaboom.

A couple years ago I inherited a RG-31 revolver chambered in .38 Special, a  brand that helped to create the term” Saturday night special” and which was notorious for poor manufacture and performance. I have put many rounds through it in spite of it having a sloppy and somewhat unreliable double action. I continued to use the gun in single action. Today while celebrating our day of freedom with a day of target shooting with the family and after shooting more the 20 rounds prior today the gun exploded. This wasn’t reloads or a squib load incident. It was due to the sloppy action. The cylinder failed to line up with the barrel. Which left nowhere for the bullet to go. These were semi-wadcutter rounds, I suspect if they were round nose the round might have sifted into place. The resulting explosion sent half of the cylinder 30 feet away denting a friends vehicle we never found that half! This could have ended up a lot worse and we are thankful it didn’t

Note in the pictures the off center primer strike compared to a casing from same gun earlier in the day and the piece of copper jacket at the edge of barrel where it peeled off.

I hope this will help to remove the “It will never happen to me” mentality for our minds. Please inspect your guns if there is ANYTHING questionable don’t use it! I intend to frame my mistake and put it in my gun room as a constant reminder of what could happen if I let myself get complacent again